“Her favorite book is actually the story [Belle]’s going to live,” Lin-Manuel Miranda added. “So there’s this crazy bit of foreshadowing that’s happening, but it’s also that interrupting your thought to say how excited you are, is the kind of sophisticated, character-revealing lyric writing that [lyricist and Menken collaborator] Howard Ashman was so good at.”

Beauty and the Beast is celebrating its 25th anniversary later this year, and to mark the occasion a “Be Our Guest”-worthy lineup of musical titans gathered to reflect on the 1991 animated classic and its legacy (x, x)